# Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Inkling

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Inkling across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-inkling
- Last updated: October 14, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 9
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Inkling only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Claude Sonnet 4.6 leads overall 55.63 to 52.13.
- The clearest category separation is in instruction following, where the averages are 48 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 87.6 for Inkling.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) in Agentic, with scores of 57.3% and 47.6%.
- Inkling is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.
- Inkling also has the larger context window at 1M.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Thinking Machines Lab |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Hybrid |
| Context | 200K | 1M |
| Overall Score | 55.63 | 52.13 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 27 | 24 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $3.00 / $15.00 | $1.87 / $4.68 |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 43.6 (Supported · #58/124)
- Inkling public-lane score: 36.2 (Supported · #72/124)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld-Verified | 72.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Claw-Eval | 67.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| CyberGym | 65.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Gert Labs | 62.92% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 8.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| JobBench | 36.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 57.3% | 47.6% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| ApprenticeBench | 2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 63.8% | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | Coming soon | 77.1% | Coming soon |
| MCP Atlas | Coming soon | 74.1% | Coming soon |
| CWE-bench v1 | Coming soon | 37.0% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 4.6
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 45 (Supported · #52/149)
- Inkling public-lane score: 34 (Supported · #80/149)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 79.6% | 77.6% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| SWE-Rebench | 60.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| React Native Evals | 80.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 59.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Vibe Code Bench | 51.48% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench31 | 48.8% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 24.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.1% | 85.5% | Inkling |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 77.4% | 77.6% | Inkling |
| SWE-bench Pro | Coming soon | 54.3% | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 63.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 4.1% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 62.8 (Unranked · 4 rankable rows)
- Inkling public-lane score: 79 (#14/29)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 58.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 86.00% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 58.7 (#45/54)
- Inkling public-lane score: 67.5 (#35/54)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 77.4% | 82% | Inkling |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |
| CharXiv w/o tools | Coming soon | 78.1% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Tie
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 54.7 (Supported · #61/181)
- Inkling public-lane score: 54.5 (Supported · #62/181)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GPQA | 89.9% | 87.9% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| SuperGPQA | 95% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE | 49% | 46% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 85.6% | 87.1% | Inkling |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.3% | 86.3% | Claude Sonnet 4.6 |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 87.9% | Coming soon |
| HLE w/o tools | Coming soon | 30% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Directional only
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: 48 (#89/128)
- Inkling public-lane score: 87.6 (#35/128)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 79.8% | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Inkling public-lane score: 58.3 (#11/12)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 4.6 | Inkling | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| AIME26 | Coming soon | 97.1% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tiers 1-3) | Coming soon | 33.333% | Coming soon |
| FrontierMath v2 (Tier 4) | Coming soon | 4.878% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 4.6 or Inkling?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Inkling?

The widest category gap is in instruction following, where the averages are 48 for Claude Sonnet 4.6 and 87.6 for Inkling.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 4.6 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 4.6 currently has 27 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Inkling cover on BenchLM?

Inkling currently has 24 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Inkling-Small](/compare/claude-sonnet-4-6-vs-inkling-small)
- [Inkling vs Inkling-Small](/compare/inkling-vs-inkling-small)
- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Inkling vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-inkling)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 4.6 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-4-6)
- [Inkling profile](/models/inkling)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)